VICTORVILLE — Nearing six months on the dais, neophyte Councilwoman Blanca Gomez first had to upend an incumbent's re-election bid. But now her election maybe inadvertently threatens another overturn: the recent run of decorum between city leaders.

Not since 2012, the second full year in office for former Victorville City Councilwoman Angela Valles, has the tension in council chambers been so palpable and sparring matches so frequent.

Particularly, the dynamic between Gomez and Mayor Gloria Garcia has been discernibly antagonistic at times. It's now reached the point where Valles, who advocated for both of their candidacies at different periods, is seeking to broker a peace deal of sorts.

"It's disappointing to see they're not working together," Valles said, "when it's such a unique opportunity to have two strong Hispanic leaders on the council."

For Gomez, the "eruption of a new change" triggered by her election has been the equivalent of entering into a realm "I never thought I'd reach," she said this week in a sit-down interview with the Daily Press. Accordingly, the experience thus far has featured two distinct sides.

"It's exhilarating to be able to represent a voice that for so long has been shut down. I never thought I had a voice," she said. Then the acknowledged difficulties: "The part, the Scarlett letter 'A,' is the council, and hopefully that's temporary."

But to best serve the population she describes as voiceless — a collection which she loosely described to include the working class, the LGBT community, minorities, the homeless, single parents, the poor, students in debt and the elderly — Gomez will have to balance tone and message or likely face the same "pushback" from other council members she has seemingly treated with suspicion from the onset.

Where she has felt most comfortable — immersed in a rigorous schedule of daily meetings and events and outside the confines of the political domain — maintains the mark of the campaign trail, where Gomez said she first began to compile input from soon-to-be constituents.

It'll be their suggestions that will ultimately guide the types of policy she puts forth over the next three-plus years. And it's their opinion more than any other that seems to matter most. She called it fair to say she's still performing the groundwork, and she claimed she realized the consensus support of her colleagues will be paramount to a successful term.

"I'm still getting my ideas to be formed and I know where I stand, but I need to get a voice," she said. Then, later: "What do I need to do to tell my colleagues, 'We need to be on board because this community is depending on us?'"

Still, Gomez has yet to have a planning commission appointee affirmed. She has responded to perceived resistance from colleagues with pejorative references to their seniority, repeatedly quibbled with fellow council members, prompted Councilman Eric Negrete to leave a meeting early — apparently fed up with disorder — and threatened to sue the city when she became the subject of a censure motion.

At the same time, she has felt attacked for what she believed to be innocuous matters for which she claimed no culpability: speaking in Spanish, seeking to better grasp agenda items and trying to slow down the process for the layperson.

Gomez has largely attributed the discord to her gameness to support the constituency being misconstrued as veering off course, but she also says other council members seem averse to accepting her attempts to extend an olive branch. Even as these "personality clashes" persist, she offered an unexpected evaluation of the early dynamic.

"If it hasn't been evident, there is a sense that it's working," she said, while also noting how the appetite to repair relationships is a two-way street.

Garcia, the most visible policymaker here, could be a difficult turn-around and suggested that Gomez' default mode is, mistakenly, to believe the Council will collectively seek to shut her down at each turn.

"We don't see her changing her attitude and she has no respect and doesn't understand. And I say, 'we,' because we all feel the same way about her," Garcia said by phone this week. "In order for her to change, Blanca has to remake herself in order to be the kind of person to represent this Council."

Garcia expressed dismay over Gomez "incriminating herself" when she speaks and for her penchant to travel to other cities, which caused confusion on at least one occasion: When the new councilwoman, donning her city badge, appeared at an ultimately canceled sanctuary city meeting at Rialto City Hall, she was bombarded with questions about her presence and if she was on official city business.

Gomez has said it was an effort to learn that went awry.

And where Gomez has said that Garcia refuses to even shake her hand at events, Garcia believes Gomez tends to enter her personal space, in fact, to cause problems.

"She does it because she knows I don't like her," Garcia said, "and her simple reason for doing what she does is because she tries to antagonize me."

"I feel for the press, the people, and the city having to see all this ugliness," she continued. "We've never had this happen before on the council and it's very difficult to deal with."

After Gomez' recommended appointee to the city's legislative review committee was arrested last Tuesday in the City Hall lobby after leaving the council meeting, the inherent cynicism held by Gomez was ramped up.

"Is this what a set up looks like?" she said. "Because it's a really nice set up."

But Richard Mettias, the recommended appointee, had been a suspect in an illegal marijuana dispensary case from January. At the time, he was detained and cited. On Monday, he was criminally charged, court records show.

"The deputy who was the case agent on the original investigation was at the meeting for security," San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Bachman said in an email Friday.

The deputy subsequently recognized Mettias and his brother and was aware of active warrants for their arrest, she said.

Gomez, irritated that she had been connected to news of his apprehension, said she only recently met Mettias during an event organized by advocates for Old Town's revival and he never submitted a letter of intent or an application for the position. She has since called for all council member nominees to be more properly vetted.

She shrugged off contentions with a politics-as-usual sentiment and showed displeasure with what she says has been lacking colleague support.

"If someone else runs and gets into office," she concluded, "I don't want them to feel like I feel."

— Staff Writer Paola Baker contributed to this report.

Shea Johnson can be reached at 760-955-5368 or SJohnson@VVDailyPress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DP_Shea.

Monica Solano can be reached at MSolano@VVDailyPress.com or at 760-951-6231. Follow her on Twitter@DP_MonicaInes